S6E1: Who were the prophets?

In this series Tony Watkins, Fellow for Public Engagement at Tyndale House, will be sharing how we can make sense of the books of the prophets, and providing helpful tips for how to read them for ourselves. In this first episode, Tony Watkins and Francie Cornes discuss why we often find the prophetic books more difficult to read than other parts of the Bible, as well as who the prophets actually were and what their role was.

Tony has put together a timeline of Old Testament history so you can visually see where the prophets came in Israel's history. Click here to view it: https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/old-testament-timelines/13583150 

Find out more about the host and guest here: 
Tony Watkins: https://tyndalehouse.com/about/staff/tony-watkins/
Francie Cornes: https://tyndalehouse.com/about/staff/francie-cornes/

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the Tyndale House podcast.

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I'm Francie Cornes, I'm

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the Communications Officer here at Tyndale House.

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And you might recognize my voice

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as the intro and outro voice on the Tyndale House podcast.

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Now, I'm sorry to say that you're going to get my voice a lot more on this series

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as I am switching places with Tony, and I'm interviewing Tony

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because Tony has been interviewing everyone else, but actually

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he has a lot of information to share about the prophets,

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which we'll be looking at this series.

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So, Tony, do you want to introduce yourself?

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Because that's something we failed to do a lot in our previous series.

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T: I did it once. F: Okay. Well done. 

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So I'm Tony Watkins, I’m the Fellow for Public Engagement here

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at Tyndale House, which means I get to do all sorts of things that help

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get the scholarship out to the wider church and the world beyond.

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So speaking, writing, editing, podcasting.

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There we go

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Telling people to listen to the Tyndale House podcast

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at every possible opportunity is one of my favorite activities now,

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and some academic work as well.

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Great. Cool.

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Now we're talking about the prophets for this series.

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And, the prophets

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we often find quite difficult to read.

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I find they're very long.

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They use lots of words I don't understand.

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We've been doing Jeremiah at my church recently, and,

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yeah, there's just lots that's hard to get your head around.

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You seem to love the prophets.

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If anyone mentions it, you’re like ‘oo the prophets’

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T: This is true F: How did you get into the prophets?

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F: And how has that developed? T: Yes.

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I think it is fairly said of me that I have an obsession

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with the prophets, and that goes back a long way.

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Back in the late 90s.

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T: Must be 97, I would think F: I wasn’t alive T: Yeah well, thank you for that.

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T: Must be 97, I would think F: I wasn’t alive T: Yeah well, thank you for that.

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Moving swiftly on.

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Yeah.

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So late 97.

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Or sometime around then, I had a student group that met early

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on a Wednesday morning, and we were doing apologetics

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and worldviews, and kind of philosophical sort of things.

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And they were very keen students to be there at 7:00 in the morning or 7:30 maybe.

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It was on a on a Wednesday morning.

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And they wanted to be stretched and they were very eager.

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And then after a while they said, can we do some really hard Bible?

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And so we had, absolutely,

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we had a bit of a discussion about what what was the hardest.

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And the consensus was that would either be Ezekiel or Revelation.

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But Revelation comes up in church from time to time

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where nobody had ever heard anything on Ezekiel.

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So I said, fine, we'll do Ezekiel.

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And I started working on Ezekiel and,

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well, well, I often say that Ezekiel grabbed hold of me

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and never let go and then introduced me to his mates.

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Just something about this literature

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grabbed my attention and and it went from

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‘Oh, this is quite interesting’ to to a yes, it really was an obsession alongside

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my main work, which was engaging with media from from a Christian point of view,

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and doing a lot of speaking, writing, teaching about that.

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I had this kind of side thing going on, of

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digging deeper and deeper into the prophets,

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teaching the prophets for the Bible and Culture

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course,

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as part of the the IFES graduates network every summer and those kinds of things,

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and then eventually I decided that this was such a big thing.

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And the media had been

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my work for so long that the obvious thing to do was to do a PhD,

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looking at how the prophets and contemporary media narratives

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might actually have some relationship to each other.

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Yeah.

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T: And they continue to be an obsession. F: Yes.

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And you finished your PhD last year, was it?

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last year.

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Yeah. Congratulations.

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So you just mentioned that your students were saying,

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Ezekiel is one of the hardest books, which I'm relieved to hear that

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they also felt that the prophets were difficult.

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Why is it that we find them so hard?

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Why is it people just think, oh, I you know, if it comes up,

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you think, oh, I should do it as a quiet time.

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You just think, I don't know where to start.

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Like why is it that we find it so much harder?

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Yeah, well you mentioned that they’re long some of them are long, the big ones are long.

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Obadiah isn't, only one chapter so you could handle that. But,

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yeah.

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So there's, there's a number of different factors.

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One is that the, I think the main thing is that the language that they use is,

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is just so alien, even if we're working on a good translation,

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the kinds of ways that they talk about stuff, the kind of imagery that they use,

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the way they structure their arguments.

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And some of the strange things they do as well.

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It all feels quite remote.

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We, we don't have

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prophecy in that kind of sense in our world anymore.

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We're used to narratives.

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And so the narrative bits of the Bible, they may work out differently

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from an English narrative, but we we’re used to the basic idea of

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this is a story we, you know, there's conflict and resolution.

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We're used to letters, New Testament letters

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are not like our letters, but we know basically what's going on

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so we we can find our way round those things.

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We, we have some sense of, that a,

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the poetry of the Bible is going to feel differently from contemporary poetry,

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but we know what sort of thing to expect from it, whereas I think we just

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don't have those kind of expectations when we come to the prophetic books.

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And these days, the the idea of the prophetic is so often

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connected with social concern

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and nothing more, so challenging social justice issues.

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And that is part of it,

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but that's not the whole of the prophetic message.

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And so,

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I just don't think we have a category to put it into very easily.

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So so that's one thing.

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And then

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related to that, I suppose the fact that we are,

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most of us

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most of the time are working in translation

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and we're we're missing stuff because of that.

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That's true of all of Scripture, but I think that has, there are some ways

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in which that is particularly problematic with the prophets occasionally.

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And then there are issues of, simple things like geography.

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So they talk about different places and we don't know where they are.

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We don't know what the relationship of, of one to another is.

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We don't know where the guys are from, who they're talking to.

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Why are they talking to to them?

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We don't know the historical context.

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You know, we know about the Assyrians and the Babylonians, but

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but where do they actually

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where do they fit into biblical history and and which prophets are addressing

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which context?

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What's the cultural situation they’re in?

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So when they use images and,

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they complain about different things,

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we're often not sure quite why they're bringing those things up

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because we don't know the culture and we assume we know what their,

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the religious context is because we know the Old Testament, but actually,

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do we actually know how it was functioning

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in, in the time of the prophets?

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Yeah.

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So I think there's there's a number of different factors

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that all combine together to make them difficult.

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And then the big one is that they’re

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so, I mean, their message is so hard.

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Yeah. They're just so stroppy.

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Yeah. Yeah.

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Doing Jeremiah at church has been very depressing.

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Yeah.

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Well Jane, my wife would say this is why I love the prophets.

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Because

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Because they're, because they're depressing.

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And, and, and there's not much joy there.

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So, she thinks that's that's why I'm drawn to them

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I wouldn't like to comment on that.

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But the fact that there is so much judgment.

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So the bits we know, tend to be the positive bits.

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Yes.

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So we quote Isaiah 9 at Christmas, the people walking in darkness

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have seen a great light.

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We we love the the suffering servant in Isaiah 53 because

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here is this wonderful description of, of the Messiah going

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through the suffering that we know the Lord Jesus went through.

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And so we can see how Isaiah is, is looking ahead to that.

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So we we pull these things out and then miss the rest because it's so hard.

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Yeah.

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So lots lots for us to get our heads around to be able to, to make sense of it.

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It's probably worth us clarifying in a way what we're talking about

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when we say the prophets because I think when, when people say the prophets

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I think, the prophetic books of the Bible, but actually

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there’s prophets mentioned earlier in the Bible as well.

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Yeah.

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So where do they where do prophets come from?

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Where does it kind of start in the Bible?

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Yeah, well we are in the series is talking about the prophetic books.

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But but yeah, yeah, that's it's good because it is worth thinking about

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about some of those others.

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So the earliest person who’s mentioned as a prophet is, is a real surprise.

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The earliest person is Abraham, who I never think of as a prophet.

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But when he,

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it's the second time that

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he's passing off his wife as his sister.

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You’d have thought he would have learnt the first time.

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But this is with, King

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Abimelech

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And, the Lord appears to this king in a dream

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or speaks to him in a dream and says, this man is a prophet,

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and he'll pray for you.

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That's fascinating, that he's the first person.

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But there's nothing about Abraham's life that makes us think of him as a prophet.

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Or at least

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it doesn’t make me think of him as a prophet,

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even though I have been thinking about the prophets for a long time.

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So. Yeah, so

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so that he's the first and the first significant one is Moses.

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So he's he's the great prophet in so many ways.

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And, and

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and towards the end of his life in Deuteronomy, Moses says,

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the Lord will raise up another prophet like me from among the people.

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But he has spent years leading the people, speaking God's word to them,

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being a mediator between God and the people,

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challenging them,

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guiding them, teaching them.

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And so there's, there's all sorts of functions that Moses is doing there,

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some of which we see reflected in later prophets, some of which we don't,

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we see the challenging obviously, later on.

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Sure.

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We, we don't very often obviously

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see the prophets leading, but clearly it is a leading function.

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So we talk about prophets, priests, and kings,

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and they're all leading the people in different kind of ways.

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The king is the shepherd of the people.

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He's he is the one who is leading the people as a whole.

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The priests have a function of teaching the people,

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and so they're leading in a different way.

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And the prophets have this function of of calling people back

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into a relationship with God, into a right relationship with God.

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And they're leading in a different way.

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Again, often leading from the margins

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because they're often excluded people marginalized,

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vilified in

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Jeremiah's case, abused by by the people.

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You know, thrown into a cistern and all these kinds of things so

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they're leading not from a often from a position of authority though some are.

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So Isaiah clearly is part of the court structure.

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He's, he's going to the king and speaking to the king.

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And Jeremiah is doing that as well, of course.

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But in a slightly different way. So there's

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yeah, Isaiah is in a position of some influence

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within the society.

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Ezekiel clearly isn't you know, he's one of the exiles.

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And so the there are those,

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factors that that don't necessarily

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reflect Moses in all those ways.

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But then we get to other people, so in Judges

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Deborah is mentioned as a prophetess.

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So she's leading the people,

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politically, she's one of the judges,

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but she's identified as a prophet.

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And it begins to ramp up when we get to into the time of the kings.

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So Samuel is a is a great prophet,

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very much in the Moses kind of mold in all sorts of ways. And,

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I think it's 1 Samuel 3 at the very beginning of that chapter,

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which is the chapter where Samuel is called by God in the night, it says the

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the Word of God was rare at that time.

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So there's a sense in which it's, it's

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clear from the text that,

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they, they've

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got the first five books, the Torah, they've got the teaching from the Lord.

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But the the Word of God is not coming in a, in a more direct,

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in a more immediate way.

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And so when Samuel becomes a prophet, he's he's embodying that

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here is the person who seems to have

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a kind of a hotline to God who is able to.

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Yeah, he is leading the people like the judges.

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He's the last of the judges, I guess.

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But also is

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has this insight into things and in a way that,

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most of the judges don't seem to have.

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So there's, the Lord is giving him insight into

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into the situation in particular ways.

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And there's a fascinating incident then when,

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when Saul is, is becoming king and, and he.

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Oh, just be just before he becomes king, is it, he, he ends up,

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running into a bunch of prophets

00:13:35:18 - 00:13:38:18
and he ends up prophesying with them.

00:13:39:06 - 00:13:42:11
I think things could have gone so well with Saul if he'd

00:13:42:17 - 00:13:44:10
If he'd stuck with that path.

00:13:44:10 - 00:13:47:10
But, yeah, things went terribly wrong.

00:13:47:14 - 00:13:50:07
We've get some mentioned, a couple of significant ones, in the time of

00:13:50:07 - 00:13:54:21
David, so Nathan, of course, rebukes David very significantly

00:13:55:11 - 00:13:59:08
after the incident, his rape of Bathsheba and setting up

00:13:59:08 - 00:14:01:18
Uriah the Hittite to be killed.

00:14:03:19 - 00:14:05:08
So Nathan is is a big player.

00:14:05:08 - 00:14:08:08
Gad is also named as David's seer.

00:14:09:15 - 00:14:10:24
So you get both of these words.

00:14:10:24 - 00:14:15:12
The seer word often appears in some of the other cultures around about,

00:14:15:18 - 00:14:20:14
but tends to be used in the earlier literature about the prophets.

00:14:20:16 - 00:14:22:06
Okay.

00:14:22:06 - 00:14:25:11
And in fact, there's a, there's a verse somewhere in Kings.

00:14:25:11 - 00:14:27:01
I think.

00:14:27:01 - 00:14:27:21
I can't remember

00:14:27:21 - 00:14:30:21
where it is off the top of my head, but I think it's in 1 Kings,

00:14:31:06 - 00:14:32:10
where it talks about people

00:14:32:10 - 00:14:34:17
T: used to call them seers and now they call them prophets. F: Okay.

00:14:34:17 - 00:14:37:18
F: So it's just a change of word? t: It just seems to be a change of word.

00:14:37:18 - 00:14:39:11
But the seer is somebody who sees.

00:14:39:11 - 00:14:42:11
the word that we translate to prophet,

00:14:43:18 - 00:14:46:05
is the translation of the Hebrew word

00:14:46:05 - 00:14:49:10
nabi, which seems to mean

00:14:49:11 - 00:14:53:04
to cry out, probably, so there's somebody who's crying out,

00:14:55:07 - 00:14:55:17
and then we've

00:14:55:17 - 00:14:58:20
got significant characters like Elijah and Elisha.

00:14:59:05 - 00:15:01:03
they're they're hugely significant

00:15:01:03 - 00:15:05:16
figures in the history of Israel, challenging the kings

00:15:05:23 - 00:15:09:12
and their idolatry, their waywardness,

00:15:11:17 - 00:15:14:17
and and Elijah in fact, when he's gone to

00:15:15:01 - 00:15:20:04
he’s had the encounter with the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18 on Mount Carmel,

00:15:20:04 - 00:15:24:22
and then gets really depressed and heads off to, to Mount Sinai,

00:15:26:11 - 00:15:26:21
and the Lord

00:15:26:21 - 00:15:30:13
appears to, to him there, in that still small voice

00:15:30:17 - 00:15:33:17
and commissions him to go and,

00:15:35:07 - 00:15:36:05
I can't remember the,

00:15:36:05 - 00:15:40:21
the exact wording now, but he's to, to to set up a new king

00:15:40:21 - 00:15:46:19
of, of, Syria and he's so he's to set up kings and he's to take down kings.

00:15:46:19 - 00:15:50:08
And so there's a, there's a political dimension there as well.

00:15:51:02 - 00:15:52:19
And then you see the sons of the prophets.

00:15:52:19 - 00:15:55:18
So they're clearly teaching people to be prophets at that time.

00:15:55:18 - 00:15:57:04
What's going on there?

00:15:57:04 - 00:16:01:14
And then finally we get into the, to the, to the writing prophets.

00:16:01:18 - 00:16:03:00
There's some female prophets as well.

00:16:03:00 - 00:16:05:23
Of course, we mentioned Deborah, but there's Huldah,

00:16:05:23 - 00:16:08:17
Isaiah's wife is mentioned as a prophet as well.

00:16:08:17 - 00:16:10:09
So there's female prophets too

00:16:10:09 - 00:16:14:17
So there seems to be a whole range there of what the prophets do.

00:16:17:01 - 00:16:17:11
Sort of.

00:16:17:11 - 00:16:19:18
I guess a similar theme is they’re sharing God's Word.

00:16:19:18 - 00:16:21:12
Is that how you’d define a prophet?

00:16:21:12 - 00:16:23:05
What does it actually mean to be a prophet?

00:16:23:05 - 00:16:24:22
Do you have a definition?

00:16:24:22 - 00:16:27:11
You were saying you were surprised Abraham gets called a prophet?

00:16:27:11 - 00:16:28:09
Yeah.

00:16:28:09 - 00:16:29:13
Yeah.

00:16:29:13 - 00:16:31:21
What is a prophet?

00:16:31:21 - 00:16:35:09
Well, from this, this word nabi its somebody who cries out,

00:16:35:09 - 00:16:38:09
so it's somebody who's who's speaking out.

00:16:40:00 - 00:16:42:04
But as I've already suggested, that's

00:16:42:04 - 00:16:45:03
that's not just speaking out against social injustice.

00:16:45:03 - 00:16:47:19
I think it is a it's crying out God's word.

00:16:47:19 - 00:16:48:17
Okay.

00:16:48:17 - 00:16:51:17
Jeremiah has this really significant,

00:16:51:22 - 00:16:54:22
point where he seems to define,

00:16:56:04 - 00:16:58:19
prophecy in terms of standing in the council of the Lord.

00:16:58:19 - 00:17:02:07
So he's talking about false prophets in Jeremiah 23.

00:17:03:08 - 00:17:06:04
And he says, concerning the prophets, my heart is broken

00:17:06:04 - 00:17:09:04
within me, and all my bones tremble because they're just,

00:17:09:10 - 00:17:12:21
you know, they’re evil, they're not speaking the truth.

00:17:13:19 - 00:17:15:05
They're not speaking God's word.

00:17:16:12 - 00:17:19:00
And then he says,

00:17:19:00 - 00:17:20:24
verse 16, this is what the Lord of armies says.

00:17:20:24 - 00:17:23:11
Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesied to you.

00:17:23:11 - 00:17:24:23
They are deluding you.

00:17:24:23 - 00:17:27:22
They speak visions from their own minds, not from the Lord's mouth.

00:17:27:22 - 00:17:30:23
They keep on saying to those who despise me, the Lord has spoken,

00:17:30:23 - 00:17:32:04
you will have peace.

00:17:32:04 - 00:17:35:01
They have said to everyone who follows the stubbornness of his heart,

00:17:35:01 - 00:17:36:20
no harm will come to you.

00:17:36:20 - 00:17:40:20
For who has stood in the council of the Lord to see and hear his word,

00:17:41:02 - 00:17:44:02
who has paid attention to his word and obeyed?

00:17:44:08 - 00:17:47:08
And then a few verses on,

00:17:47:15 - 00:17:49:12
I didn't send out these prophets yet they ran.

00:17:49:12 - 00:17:52:03
I didn't speak to them, yet they prophesied.

00:17:52:03 - 00:17:55:24
If they really had stood in my council, they would have enabled my people to hear

00:17:55:24 - 00:18:00:18
my words and would have turned them from their evil ways and their evil deeds.

00:18:00:20 - 00:18:04:18
So Jeremiah seems to be saying, not seems to be saying,

00:18:04:18 - 00:18:08:03
Jeremiah is saying that a prophet is somebody who stands in the council

00:18:08:03 - 00:18:09:08
of the Lord.

00:18:09:08 - 00:18:10:15
He hears what

00:18:10:15 - 00:18:16:00
what God says or or even hears the discussion within the divine

00:18:16:00 - 00:18:20:11
council, he's like an observer at this, this heavenly summit where

00:18:21:14 - 00:18:24:14
where the Lord Yahweh is, is discussing

00:18:25:01 - 00:18:30:01
what's to happen with his . . . who is his divine council—council of angels?

00:18:30:01 - 00:18:33:13
Probably that's a fascinating concept in itself, isn't it?

00:18:33:22 - 00:18:37:05
And Jeremiah seems to be saying, he stands there.

00:18:37:15 - 00:18:40:03
He hears what's what's happening.

00:18:40:03 - 00:18:44:00
And then he's he is to speak the words that God has given him.

00:18:44:05 - 00:18:44:13
Right

00:18:44:13 - 00:18:47:14
And these people, the false prophets, they don't speak God's word.

00:18:47:23 - 00:18:49:16
So that's the fundamental definition.

00:18:49:16 - 00:18:52:16
They hear from God and they speak God's Word.

00:18:53:00 - 00:18:56:07
And so often you have this very explicit phrase.

00:18:56:07 - 00:18:58:21
I mean, just looking randomly

00:18:58:21 - 00:19:01:21
on the other page of the Bible that I have here.

00:19:01:24 - 00:19:03:08
This is Jeremiah 24:4.

00:19:03:08 - 00:19:04:19
The word of the Lord came to me,

00:19:04:19 - 00:19:07:12
and you get that phrase coming again and again and again.

00:19:07:12 - 00:19:09:00
The word of the Lord came to me.

00:19:09:00 - 00:19:10:21
We don't know how, you know what

00:19:10:21 - 00:19:12:21
What does Jeremiah experience?

00:19:12:21 - 00:19:16:24
Does he does he hear a voice saying, this is what you to say to the people?

00:19:17:14 - 00:19:20:08
Does a sense just form in his heart?

00:19:21:10 - 00:19:23:08
Does he

00:19:23:08 - 00:19:26:01
does he think, okay, this is the situation

00:19:26:01 - 00:19:29:11
Let let me just work through what needs to be said to these people.

00:19:29:11 - 00:19:32:23
And as he does so, presumably prayerfully, the Holy Spirit is working and he

00:19:33:06 - 00:19:35:05
and he works on his message and he gets to the end of it.

00:19:35:05 - 00:19:38:13
He says, oh, yeah, yeah, I think this is what the Lord is saying in just the way

00:19:38:13 - 00:19:41:17
a preacher today might. We don't know.

00:19:41:21 - 00:19:42:04
Yeah.

00:19:42:04 - 00:19:44:23
And I think it's probably all of the above at different times.

00:19:44:23 - 00:19:47:23
Yeah. And maybe this is . . .

00:19:48:07 - 00:19:48:19
Well, just

00:19:48:19 - 00:19:53:08
when you saying that passage talks about false prophets. In

00:19:55:04 - 00:19:59:01
in the time that the prophets were speaking, how were the people of God

00:19:59:12 - 00:20:04:00
able to to know if they were a prophet speaking God's word or not?

00:20:04:01 - 00:20:04:12
Yeah.

00:20:05:11 - 00:20:06:07
Well, Moses gives a

00:20:06:07 - 00:20:09:07
test for, whether somebody is a false prophet or not.

00:20:09:11 - 00:20:13:03
So if they if they claim to speak God's word and what they say doesn't happen,

00:20:13:16 - 00:20:16:16
T: then they’re a false prophet. F: Okay,

00:20:16:18 - 00:20:20:06
F: Harder when it’s long-term prophecies T: Yeah

00:20:20:24 - 00:20:22:12
it can become a bit of a problem.

00:20:22:12 - 00:20:24:04
Yeah.

00:20:24:04 - 00:20:27:04
Jeremiah seems to be saying that

00:20:27:13 - 00:20:30:13
they're false prophets because they are.

00:20:31:01 - 00:20:33:09
They're giving, well, they're giving a message

00:20:33:09 - 00:20:36:15
that's out of line with his message. So he knows he's a true prophet

00:20:36:15 - 00:20:38:13
But then how do the other people know that?

00:20:38:13 - 00:20:39:20
Yeah.

00:20:39:20 - 00:20:42:20
So that that doesn't in some ways that doesn't help.

00:20:43:22 - 00:20:46:17
But he, he is saying

00:20:46:17 - 00:20:49:17
they keep saying there's going to be peace and there isn't going to be peace.

00:20:49:21 - 00:20:51:07
You just wait and see.

00:20:51:07 - 00:20:54:16
Yeah, the Babylonians are coming and there really will be no peace.

00:20:54:16 - 00:20:57:16
You will you you're going to feel this and then you'll see.

00:20:57:18 - 00:20:59:16
And Ezekiel has this great passage in,

00:21:00:22 - 00:21:03:10
Ezekiel 12 or 13,

00:21:03:10 - 00:21:08:02
where he, he compares the prophets to a wall that's being whitewashed.

00:21:08:02 - 00:21:10:06
yeah, chapter 13,

00:21:10:06 - 00:21:12:16
and the storm comes and the,

00:21:12:16 - 00:21:16:05
the wall is demolished by this, this, this storm.

00:21:16:17 - 00:21:20:02
And he says other people are going to say, where's the whitewash gone, you know,

00:21:20:08 - 00:21:23:11
because the the prophecy is just going to be swept away, right, with the

00:21:23:11 - 00:21:27:19
so that they will be shown to be false because their word hasn't come true.

00:21:29:14 - 00:21:32:04
So it feels like

00:21:32:04 - 00:21:35:04
the false prophets are much more likely to say positive things,

00:21:36:07 - 00:21:38:11
and not challenge sin, I guess, as well.

00:21:38:11 - 00:21:40:14
Jeremiah, he's challenging what they're doing.

00:21:40:14 - 00:21:43:21
if they're saying it's fine that should be ringing alarm bells.

00:21:43:21 - 00:21:44:11
Exactly.

00:21:44:11 - 00:21:45:10
‘Peace, peace, where there is

00:21:45:10 - 00:21:49:21
no peace’ is in the famous phrase Jeremiah again from from Jeremiah 7.

00:21:51:10 - 00:21:53:14
So yeah, they say everything's going to be fine.

00:21:53:14 - 00:21:56:14
You know, the Lord loves you, everything's great. And,

00:21:58:04 - 00:22:02:00
and and there doesn't seem to be any detail to that, whereas Jeremiah

00:22:02:00 - 00:22:06:14
and the other prophets are able to say, well, the Lord does does love you,

00:22:07:23 - 00:22:10:19
but you're going to feel that love in a very painful way,

00:22:10:19 - 00:22:13:19
because you're going to experience his disciplining judgment.

00:22:14:07 - 00:22:17:12
In order to bring you back into a right relationship with him.

00:22:17:12 - 00:22:20:12
And so he is going to bring this judgment on you.

00:22:21:00 - 00:22:22:08
And it's very specific.

00:22:22:08 - 00:22:24:20
It's going to happen because of this and because of this,

00:22:24:20 - 00:22:27:05
you know, you have failed to keep the terms of the covenant.

00:22:27:05 - 00:22:30:05
You have failed to to have a a good relationship with God.

00:22:30:05 - 00:22:33:05
You failed to have a good relationships with other people.

00:22:33:10 - 00:22:36:10
You've you've not looked after the land or whatever it might be.

00:22:36:14 - 00:22:40:20
So there's there's very specific detail about about what they're doing wrong.

00:22:40:20 - 00:22:42:09
Whereas the other false prophets,

00:22:43:09 - 00:22:45:04
are often quite vague it seems.

00:22:45:04 - 00:22:47:11
Yeah. Okay.

00:22:47:11 - 00:22:51:23
Now we’re, as you said, we're focusing on the writing prophets for this series.

00:22:51:23 - 00:22:54:23
We're not we're not talking about the, the non-writing prophets.

00:22:55:22 - 00:22:57:01
Who, who were they,

00:22:57:01 - 00:22:59:06
who are the ones who have have the books in the Bible?

00:22:59:06 - 00:23:01:00
And where did they live?

00:23:01:00 - 00:23:03:11
What, yeah, what can we know about them?

00:23:03:11 - 00:23:06:11
So we have, oh it depends

00:23:07:02 - 00:23:09:07
T: Well we have F: there’s quite a few aren’t there T: Yeah.

00:23:09:07 - 00:23:12:03
So there's, there's, there's three major prophets.

00:23:12:03 - 00:23:15:06
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel who have very long books.

00:23:16:12 - 00:23:19:12
Jeremiah's is the longest,

00:23:19:16 - 00:23:21:20
of the books.

00:23:21:20 - 00:23:24:18
And then there's the Book of the Twelve,

00:23:24:18 - 00:23:28:13
as it's known in the Hebrew Bible. We tend to call them the Minor Prophets.

00:23:29:01 - 00:23:31:13
I don't like the phrase minor prophets,

00:23:31:13 - 00:23:34:13
because it makes them sound like they're second-rate prophets.

00:23:34:23 - 00:23:36:22
And it just means they're smaller prophets.

00:23:36:22 - 00:23:39:22
It doesn't mean that, that they're second rate but but I so

00:23:40:06 - 00:23:41:20
sometimes I talk about minor prophets,

00:23:41:20 - 00:23:44:20
but I prefer to talk about the Book of the Twelve because there

00:23:45:01 - 00:23:48:01
it, it's, I think it's significant that

00:23:48:13 - 00:23:51:17
that for, through the whole process of the

00:23:52:01 - 00:23:54:23
the Old Testament canon forming or what we call the Old Testament

00:23:56:02 - 00:23:57:13
There was that sense of

00:23:57:13 - 00:24:00:19
these books being gathered together into a single scroll.

00:24:01:13 - 00:24:03:21
So they function together as a as a set.

00:24:03:21 - 00:24:05:11
There's there's difference between them yet

00:24:05:11 - 00:24:08:12
there's, there's this clear demarcation.

00:24:09:10 - 00:24:12:10
This is Jonah, this is Amos, and so on.

00:24:12:12 - 00:24:14:21
And yet they're all on one scroll.

00:24:14:21 - 00:24:17:16
And I think we need to take that seriously.

00:24:17:16 - 00:24:20:16
So I generally will talk about the Book of the Twelve.

00:24:20:22 - 00:24:23:12
But you may notice I haven't mentioned Daniel, so

00:24:23:12 - 00:24:26:12
he's he's I call him ‘the other one’.

00:24:26:15 - 00:24:31:07
I love Daniel, but in the Hebrew Bible, he's not counted as a prophet.

00:24:31:18 - 00:24:32:23
So there's three sections

00:24:32:23 - 00:24:37:21
of the Hebrew Bible, which is often called the the Tanakh, which is an acronym.

00:24:37:22 - 00:24:40:24
So the Torah; the Nevi’im is the Prophets.

00:24:40:24 - 00:24:43:19
And that's divided it into the the former prophets,

00:24:43:19 - 00:24:46:13
which are books that we think of as historical books.

00:24:46:13 - 00:24:51:10
So Judges, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings.

00:24:52:02 - 00:24:54:08
Those books are in the former prophets.

00:24:54:08 - 00:24:57:09
And that's interesting, isn't it, because how are these prophets?

00:24:58:13 - 00:25:00:16
There are prophets within them.

00:25:00:16 - 00:25:03:16
But that categorization

00:25:03:16 - 00:25:07:12
seems to say there's something prophetic about those books as a whole.

00:25:08:10 - 00:25:10:19
And then there's the latter prophets, which is what we think of

00:25:10:19 - 00:25:13:04
as our writing prophets, but not Daniel.

00:25:13:04 - 00:25:16:08
Daniel comes in the third section of the Tanakh, which is the Ketuvim,

00:25:17:03 - 00:25:18:10
which is the Writings.

00:25:18:10 - 00:25:21:10
So they don't they don't treat him as a prophet, and yet

00:25:21:24 - 00:25:25:20
he has these visions. I mean the first half of his narrative, the second half is visions.

00:25:26:12 - 00:25:27:20
He seems to be a prophet.

00:25:27:20 - 00:25:30:20
Yeah, I think he's justifiably called a prophet.

00:25:31:00 - 00:25:33:03
He just wasn't put in that section.

00:25:33:03 - 00:25:34:15
And that's fascinating.

00:25:34:15 - 00:25:37:21
I, I've not resolved in my mind what I make of that.

00:25:38:00 - 00:25:41:00
So we're, we're including him here.

00:25:41:03 - 00:25:41:14
Yeah.

00:25:41:14 - 00:25:44:14
He’s got special dispensation to be here.

00:25:44:16 - 00:25:46:05
2000 years of Christian history,

00:25:47:04 - 00:25:49:02
canon dispensation to

00:25:49:02 - 00:25:52:02
T: be included in our discussion. F: Very good

00:25:53:06 - 00:25:54:17
F: So, T: Oh, yes.

00:25:54:17 - 00:25:55:17
Who are they though?

00:25:55:17 - 00:25:58:06
F: That that was what I asked T: I remember the question.

00:25:59:20 - 00:26:03:23
So yeah, the the earliest ones

00:26:04:17 - 00:26:07:20
of the writing prophets are probably from the eighth, eighth century [BC].

00:26:07:20 - 00:26:11:14
So in the eighth century, Jonah probably comes there.

00:26:11:14 - 00:26:13:24
There's there's some debate over this.

00:26:13:24 - 00:26:18:16
So Jonah is mentioned in the Book of Kings during the reign of Joash.

00:26:19:03 - 00:26:22:08
I think so, probably he lived ninth century,

00:26:22:09 - 00:26:25:09
late ninth century.

00:26:25:12 - 00:26:27:07
the book seems to be

00:26:27:07 - 00:26:30:07
probably eighth century.

00:26:30:10 - 00:26:31:21
But there are arguments over that.

00:26:31:21 - 00:26:34:15
But I tend to, to put it in in 8th century.

00:26:34:15 - 00:26:37:06
We may come back to that later in, later in the series,

00:26:37:06 - 00:26:39:04
because there's all sorts of interesting questions about Jonah.

00:26:40:23 - 00:26:43:01
Then in the I've mentioned, the kingdom divided.

00:26:43:01 - 00:26:46:20
So in the northern kingdom of Israel, you've got Amos and Hosea.

00:26:47:23 - 00:26:50:23
Though Amos was from the South, he was a shepherd.

00:26:51:13 - 00:26:53:05
And a fig,

00:26:53:05 - 00:26:55:18
a tender of fig trees in the Southern Kingdom in Tekoa.

00:26:55:18 - 00:26:59:02
And he went to the Northern Kingdom, which must have been uncomfortable.

00:26:59:08 - 00:27:01:08
Yeah. For him,

00:27:01:08 - 00:27:03:24
not least because of this national rivalry.

00:27:03:24 - 00:27:06:05
Yeah.

00:27:06:05 - 00:27:09:05
And then in the southern Kingdom, you've got Isaiah and Micah

00:27:09:07 - 00:27:14:15
and they’re pretty much contemporary; Hosea, maybe, just slightly earlier.

00:27:14:24 - 00:27:17:24
Sorry, Amos might be slightly earlier than the others.

00:27:18:03 - 00:27:21:03
Amos and Micah,

00:27:21:06 - 00:27:23:08
I think are pretty much exact contemporaries.

00:27:23:08 - 00:27:24:07
Right.

00:27:24:07 - 00:27:26:23
And in fact, they, they have a little bit

00:27:26:23 - 00:27:28:12
one of them is quoting from the other.

00:27:28:12 - 00:27:30:03
Sorry that was Micah and Amos?

00:27:30:03 - 00:27:31:05
Sorry, Micah

00:27:31:05 - 00:27:33:16
and Isaiah in the southern king.

00:27:33:16 - 00:27:33:24
Amos was slightly earlier.

00:27:34:24 - 00:27:35:11
Amos

00:27:35:11 - 00:27:38:11
probably slightly earlier, yeah.

00:27:38:14 - 00:27:41:24
But but all within the eighth century, and in the eighth century,

00:27:42:12 - 00:27:46:06
the, the dominant superpower in the ancient Near East was Assyria.

00:27:48:02 - 00:27:50:16
Early in the century,

00:27:50:16 - 00:27:53:21
Assyria was in a fairly weak state.

00:27:55:20 - 00:27:59:17
And so it was a time when the, the kings of Israel and Judah

00:27:59:17 - 00:28:04:18
were able to push back the, the borders and, and build.

00:28:04:18 - 00:28:07:18
And it was a time of prosperity and peace.

00:28:08:05 - 00:28:11:05
And, well, it was a time of prosperity for the wealthy anyway.

00:28:11:23 - 00:28:16:04
It was also clearly a time of of massive inequality within the society.

00:28:16:24 - 00:28:19:17
So all was not well, but if you were

00:28:19:17 - 00:28:22:21
in the upper echelons of the society you would have thought life was great.

00:28:22:24 - 00:28:24:03
Okay.

00:28:24:03 - 00:28:27:02
And then as the eighth century wears on,

00:28:27:02 - 00:28:30:02
so the Assyrians become increasingly

00:28:30:04 - 00:28:32:14
strong and, dominant again.

00:28:32:14 - 00:28:36:04
And so then you end up in 722 [BC] the

00:28:36:04 - 00:28:40:06
the  Assyrians come and destroy the northern kingdom of Israel altogether.

00:28:40:06 - 00:28:43:05
And and it never exists as a nation again.

00:28:43:05 - 00:28:44:00
It has just gone.

00:28:44:00 - 00:28:46:21
So we talk about the the lost tribes of Israel.

00:28:46:21 - 00:28:50:08
Because of that Assyrian destruction, many people taken off into exile.

00:28:51:24 - 00:28:52:21
And they then they

00:28:52:21 - 00:28:55:11
of course, they settle other people in the northern Kingdom

00:28:55:11 - 00:28:57:01
who intermarry with those who are left there.

00:28:57:01 - 00:29:00:01
Their descendants become the Samaritans, who

00:29:00:07 - 00:29:03:07
then are so hated by Jesus's time.

00:29:04:00 - 00:29:06:04
That's not the end of what's going on in the north, but

00:29:06:04 - 00:29:09:04
it is the end of the Northern Kingdom. So,

00:29:10:06 - 00:29:13:03
all of these four prophets are anticipating that coming.

00:29:13:03 - 00:29:13:12
Okay.

00:29:13:12 - 00:29:18:10
And and Jonah, of course, has had to go to Assyria to preach repentance

00:29:18:10 - 00:29:20:08
in Nineveh.

00:29:20:08 - 00:29:22:18
Does he know that they're going to be

00:29:22:18 - 00:29:25:03
the great enemy of his people in the future?

00:29:25:03 - 00:29:26:22
That's a fascinating question.

00:29:26:22 - 00:29:28:24
I think he I suspect he does.

00:29:28:24 - 00:29:30:13
And that may be part of his reluctance.

00:29:30:13 - 00:29:31:22
Yeah, that makes a bit more sense of that.

00:29:31:22 - 00:29:35:23
And then in the seventh century [BC], we've got,

00:29:36:15 - 00:29:40:12
so this is after the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel,

00:29:41:03 - 00:29:43:06
but it's before the Babylonians,

00:29:44:08 - 00:29:45:00
conquer the

00:29:45:00 - 00:29:48:00
southern kingdom and take people into exile.

00:29:48:04 - 00:29:52:05
So we've got Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, and Jeremiah.

00:29:52:05 - 00:29:56:00
Jeremiah is going into the beginning of the of the sixth century

00:29:56:00 - 00:29:59:10
because he experiences that destruction of the, of the Babylonians.

00:29:59:10 - 00:30:03:10
That's why Jeremiah is so depressing, because it's he's so close up to it.

00:30:03:10 - 00:30:07:24
But he has a long, quite a long career, a long ministry, and then sixth century.

00:30:08:14 - 00:30:11:14
So in exile, Ezekiel, Daniel,

00:30:12:15 - 00:30:14:15
Obadiah is

00:30:14:15 - 00:30:17:15
later on in the sixth century, probably,

00:30:17:23 - 00:30:19:11
Haggai. Zechariah.

00:30:19:11 - 00:30:22:09
Both talking about rebuilding the temple at the end of exile.

00:30:22:09 - 00:30:24:22
Joel possibly comes there.

00:30:24:22 - 00:30:26:19
Joel might come in the seventh century.

00:30:26:19 - 00:30:29:14
Might come in the eighth century.

00:30:29:14 - 00:30:31:11
He's been dated any time between the ninth century

00:30:31:11 - 00:30:33:11
and the third century, there's all . . .

00:30:33:11 - 00:30:36:11
Is there just not much detail given?

00:30:36:13 - 00:30:37:12
There's, no

00:30:37:12 - 00:30:39:20
he doesn't give us enough clues in his book.

00:30:39:20 - 00:30:42:18
But if you look at the order of the Book of the Twelve,

00:30:42:18 - 00:30:45:22
he's early on and most of them are in chronological order.

00:30:46:07 - 00:30:46:18
Okay.

00:30:46:18 - 00:30:49:14
So Hosea, you know, eighth century at the beginning.

00:30:49:14 - 00:30:52:17
Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah.

00:30:52:17 - 00:30:55:05
So Hosea and Amos, are eighth century.

00:30:55:05 - 00:30:57:11
Joel is sandwiched between them.

00:30:57:11 - 00:31:00:10
Does that mean that Joel is eighth century?

00:31:01:18 - 00:31:02:08
I think that

00:31:02:08 - 00:31:05:08
has to be taken seriously, because

00:31:06:06 - 00:31:08:06
suppose I, as I think

00:31:08:06 - 00:31:11:11
is likely the Book of the Twelve was put together after the exile.

00:31:11:18 - 00:31:13:00
So there are.

00:31:13:00 - 00:31:16:04
Well, obviously it has to be because Malachi's is the last of them.

00:31:16:04 - 00:31:18:16
he's he's in the fifth century.

00:31:18:16 - 00:31:21:16
So he's well after the exile.

00:31:22:03 - 00:31:23:20
So that the Scroll of the Twelve

00:31:23:20 - 00:31:26:19
can't be put together in its final form until then.

00:31:26:19 - 00:31:29:09
Yeah.

00:31:29:09 - 00:31:30:05
It seems to me

00:31:30:05 - 00:31:33:05
that they would have known when Joel had lived.

00:31:33:16 - 00:31:36:16
So if they knew that he was

00:31:37:07 - 00:31:41:21
sixth century say, after the exile or even during the exile,

00:31:42:13 - 00:31:45:16
why would they have put him between Hosea and and Amos?

00:31:46:03 - 00:31:48:19
They they, they probably knew.

00:31:48:19 - 00:31:51:00
But that's, that in itself is not

00:31:51:00 - 00:31:55:13
it's, it's not as an overriding argument but it is significant.

00:31:56:15 - 00:31:58:18
So there's yeah questions there.

00:31:58:18 - 00:32:01:10
Okay.

00:32:01:10 - 00:32:02:18
And then

00:32:02:18 - 00:32:06:08
so you have mentioned the Babylonian exile. So the seventh century

00:32:06:08 - 00:32:09:08
people are anticipating the coming of the Babylonians.

00:32:09:23 - 00:32:14:08
You know, Habakkuk is complaining to the Lord about the violence in Judah.

00:32:14:08 - 00:32:17:08
Says, how long, how long are you going to let this carry on?

00:32:17:24 - 00:32:19:21
And God says, it just, it's okay,

00:32:19:21 - 00:32:20:17
I'm going to do something.

00:32:20:17 - 00:32:23:06
I'm going to send the Babylonians,

00:32:23:06 - 00:32:25:01
Habukkuk can't get his head around this.

00:32:25:01 - 00:32:25:24
How can you use them?

00:32:25:24 - 00:32:27:09
Because they're even more evil than

00:32:27:09 - 00:32:30:05
than your people are.

00:32:30:05 - 00:32:33:05
And the Lord says, well, they'll get their comeuppance, too.

00:32:33:09 - 00:32:36:09
So they're expecting the Babylonians to come.

00:32:36:14 - 00:32:39:00
Jeremiah says work with them.

00:32:39:00 - 00:32:43:02
Just . . . if you cooperate with them,

00:32:43:02 - 00:32:46:08
if you surrender to them, if you work for their good

00:32:46:08 - 00:32:49:15
even. He sends a letter to the exile saying, ‘seek the peace of the city’.

00:32:50:09 - 00:32:51:18
The enemy city where they're living.

00:32:52:23 - 00:32:55:23
So he's constantly saying, don't fight this.

00:32:56:02 - 00:32:59:02
The Lord is is using them to judge you.

00:32:59:12 - 00:33:01:06
And they just don't listen to him.

00:33:01:06 - 00:33:04:06
So he experiences the Babylonians invading.

00:33:05:12 - 00:33:07:14
There’s a huge battle, the Battle of Carchemish

00:33:07:14 - 00:33:10:21
in 605 [BC] at which point the,

00:33:11:11 - 00:33:15:09
the Egyptian Assyrian alliance was, was finally defeated and

00:33:16:24 - 00:33:19:24
But, well, Assyria was irrelevant from that point onwards,

00:33:20:20 - 00:33:22:06
it was part of the Babylonian Empire.

00:33:22:06 - 00:33:25:18
But that was the point at which Judah becomes a vassal state of Babylon

00:33:26:21 - 00:33:32:08
Possibly Daniel and the first exiles were taken at that point, maybe 597 [BC].

00:33:32:08 - 00:33:36:04
I think it's more likely 605 [BC]. But there are a couple of other events

00:33:36:04 - 00:33:39:22
where the kings over Jerusalem fail to pay their taxes.

00:33:39:22 - 00:33:41:14
The Babylonians came back and gave them a hard time

00:33:41:14 - 00:33:44:14
until finally in 587 [BC] they they destroyed Jerusalem.

00:33:44:14 - 00:33:46:00
They destroy the temple.

00:33:46:00 - 00:33:50:05
And and Jeremiah's absolutely beside himself with grief.

00:33:51:21 - 00:33:53:00
And you really feel that.

00:33:53:00 - 00:33:54:17
And so is Ezekiel.

00:33:54:17 - 00:33:57:21
Ezekiel is hundreds of miles away in exile in Babylon

00:33:58:18 - 00:34:02:24
And, but he he has this awful,

00:34:06:01 - 00:34:07:06
thing to experience

00:34:07:06 - 00:34:11:02
to, to, to prophesy to the people about it

00:34:11:12 - 00:34:15:08
because the Lord says with one blow, I'm going to take away the light of your eyes.

00:34:16:18 - 00:34:20:14
Your wife is going to die, and you're not to mourn or to go about,

00:34:20:16 - 00:34:23:14
you know, not to put sackcloth on,

00:34:23:14 - 00:34:26:14
not to do all the things that mourners do. You  just go about your business.

00:34:27:01 - 00:34:31:02
And and so his his wife died and he and he just got on and he said,

00:34:31:02 - 00:34:34:00
that's what it's going to be like when, when the temple is destroyed

00:34:34:00 - 00:34:35:02
because we're not going to know,

00:34:36:07 - 00:34:39:04
and then eventually Ezekiel hasn't been able to speak

00:34:39:04 - 00:34:42:15
except when he's prophesying for six years and then eventually,

00:34:44:05 - 00:34:47:02
somebody gets away from the destruction in Jerusalem.

00:34:47:02 - 00:34:50:02
They get to the exiles, bring in the news that the temple

00:34:50:05 - 00:34:53:05
and the city have been destroyed.

00:34:53:24 - 00:34:55:19
And of course, that's a huge shock to people there,

00:34:55:19 - 00:34:58:19
but that's the point at which, Ezekiel is able to speak again.

00:35:00:04 - 00:35:01:06
So that's

00:35:01:06 - 00:35:04:03
yeah, it’s a massive, massive event in their history.

00:35:04:03 - 00:35:04:24
Yeah.

00:35:04:24 - 00:35:07:24
And then the later people, Haggai, Zechariah,

00:35:08:14 - 00:35:11:02
they are tail end of the exile

00:35:11:02 - 00:35:14:02
or just after it and saying, you know, people have gone back,

00:35:14:02 - 00:35:16:04
we can rebuild the temple, those kinds of things.

00:35:16:04 - 00:35:18:22
We you need to get on with this now and then

00:35:18:22 - 00:35:21:17
Malachi in the fifth century.

00:35:21:17 - 00:35:24:16
He's now in the in the time of the Persian Empire.

00:35:26:08 - 00:35:28:12
And he's saying, well, you're back in the land,

00:35:28:12 - 00:35:33:07
but everything isn't right. There, there's a whole new set of problems.

00:35:34:08 - 00:35:36:11
And he again, like, so many of them, looking ahead

00:35:36:11 - 00:35:40:03
to the coming of the final of this, the great Messiah.

00:35:40:06 - 00:35:41:19
There are other small messiahs,

00:35:41:19 - 00:35:46:00
but the capital M Messiah he’s really anticipating.

00:35:46:00 - 00:35:48:20
Great, I think we're going to leave it there.

00:35:48:20 - 00:35:51:05
Because I feel like you could talk about the prophets

00:35:51:05 - 00:35:54:17
for a long time, which is why we're doing a series. So,

00:35:54:19 - 00:35:56:22
Yeah. Really fascinating.

00:35:56:22 - 00:36:00:02
Next, the next episode, we'll be looking at what was the

00:36:00:07 - 00:36:04:00
what was the theological understanding and background that the prophets had?

00:36:04:12 - 00:36:06:21
I think Tony mentioned earlier that we kind of assume

00:36:06:21 - 00:36:10:00
we know the religious context and situation that they’re in.

00:36:10:00 - 00:36:13:00
But actually, what what was their theological understanding?

00:36:13:15 - 00:36:15:22
So, yeah, that'll be the next episode.

00:36:15:22 - 00:36:17:15
So yeah. Stay tuned.

00:36:17:15 - 00:36:19:19
Yeah. Make sure to subscribe.

00:36:19:19 - 00:36:22:19
So you don't miss that and rate and review.

00:36:22:22 - 00:36:26:05
F: Let us know what you think of the episodes T: You’re stealing all my lines, Francie.

00:36:27:19 - 00:36:28:03
Yeah.

00:36:28:03 - 00:36:32:07
And, if you're watching on YouTube, please do comment below.

00:36:32:07 - 00:36:34:04
Let us know if you've got any questions.

00:36:34:04 - 00:36:36:13
Any thoughts.

00:36:36:13 - 00:36:37:18
Is there anything else I’m meant to say

00:36:37:18 - 00:36:40:00
F: Tony? This is your job T: No, I think those are the kind of things F: No is that everything?

00:36:40:00 - 00:36:40:14
Okay, great.

00:36:40:14 - 00:36:43:24
T: You’re saying more things than I say, actually. F: I won’t say, tell your dog about the podcast

00:36:43:24 - 00:36:45:24
which is what Tony seems to say,

00:36:45:24 - 00:36:47:16
Because my brain's going to be all over the place

00:36:47:16 - 00:36:49:12
by the time I get to the end of a podcast.

00:36:49:12 - 00:36:50:22
But yes, thank you for listening.

00:36:50:22 - 00:36:53:05
And, hopefully you’ll join us next time.